BMC to Galadima: 'You are ignorant of laws guiding campaign funding'

The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has asked the People's Democratic Party (PDP) and it's Presidential campaign spokesperson, Buba Galadima to have a clear understanding of the laws guiding campaign funding before making public statement on contribution to the campaign of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The Organization lampooned Galadima for displaying crash ignorance and expressing frustration over the donation of about N1.2 billion by Nigerian farmers to the campaign the President.

Galadima had called for the disqualification of President Muhammadu Buhari for receiving such huge donation towards his campaign saying such donations contravene the provision of the Electoral Act.

In a statement signed by Niyi Akinsiju and Cassidy Madueke, Chairman and Secretary respectively, BMO said that Galadima is uninformed about the tenets of the Electoral Act which is why he is finding fault with N100 individual donation of members of an association to the campaign of the President.

"The association of farmers and fertilizer producers are not corporate entities and neither are they registered corporations, and certainly not captured in the Electoral Act. So for Galadima, a supposedly educated person and politician to ask for disqualification of president Buhari on the basis of their donation, is engagement in petty talks.

"Is Galadima rewriting the law on who and what to contribute to an electioneering campaign fund? He apparently forgets that President Buhari enjoys mass appeal and popularity among the Nigerian poor and downtrodden who he is feverishly elevating on to higher economic levels from the extreme poverty to which they were pushed into by the collective irresponsibility of the PDP governments of many years."

The group contended that Buba Galadima got himself mixed up, by equating individual donation to corporate donation. "We advise this gentleman to keep his anger under control so that such anger should not be allowed to contaminate the political space".

The group also described the spokesperson's allegation that security agencies were after the lawmakers who heckled president Buhari at the presentation of the 2019 budget proposal "as figment of his imagination and the product of a troubled mind.

"Obviously, PDP elements see defeat at the 2019 election staring them in face and they are jittery. The colossal failure of their presidential campaign flag- off in three geographical zones in the country, the groundswell of popular acclaim of President Muhammadu Buhari achievements all over the country have put the PDP under tremendous pressure and they have become desperadoes".

BMO said President Muhammadu Buhari is a magnanimous person with a heart of gold that, despite Galadima's rouble rousing, still keeps his (Galadima's) daughter as one of his aides in the Presidency.

The group said the donation by rice farmers and fertilizer producers is a guarantee of over 12 million votes for President Muhammadu Buhari in the February 2019 election, adding that people who have enough confidence in a person to donate their widow's mite of N100 each to his election campaign fund will definitely vote for that person along with their friends and relations.

While appreciating the testimonies by RIFAN members, through their leadership, the group said the anchor borrowers programme has yielded the desired result by generating more employment opportunities for our teeming youth in Nigeria, rice sufficiency to the Nigerian populace and easy access to fertilizer; the government programme also ensures that rice import is at its lowest level.

"So also FEPSAN testified through its president that the government fertilizer initiative has saved the country N120bn subsidy and thereby crashing the price of fertilizer within the last three years. FEPSAN leader also confirmed that as at year 2015, less than five fertilizer blending plants were working in Nigeria, but as at now we have thirty fertilizer blending plants working due to government policy."

BMO says it believes that looking at the total number of beneficiaries and the card-carrying members in both RIFAN and FEPSAN, "one can confidently say that President Muhammadu Buhari will get the votes of all the members of these two associations and win in the 2019 presidential election because of his achievements in agriculture and other various sectors."

The Buhari Media Organization applauded the diversification policy of the Buhari administration, the positive results and the employment generated in the informal sector.